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GMOs: "The new EU restrictions are a boomerang"

The EU wants to allow governments to ban GMOs in their own country. Its opponents claim that the new proposal is a farce since it actually exposes the States to producers lawsuits.

EU countries will have the right to restrict or prohibit in their own territory the use of food and feed produced with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), although already approved at EU level.

However, according to environmentalists, the proposal is a farce because the rules of the free market will still prevail on the choices of individual States.

In practice, the European Commission proposes to amend the current directive on genetically modified food and feed (GMO), in order to allow EU countries to opt-out from the Europe-wide approval system. The need to adapt the legal framework comes for a better expression of national governments’ views on the use of GMOs.

According to the a current legislation, Member States may provisionally restrict the distribution on their territory of GMOs authorized at European level only if they demonstrate that there is a risk to human health or the environment.

What will change with the new proposal is that once a specific GMO is authorised by the EU, Member States will still have the possibility to decide if they want to allow it in their food chain based on reasons other than health and environmental concerns.

Federica Ferrario, sustainable agriculture campaign manager at Greenpeace Italy, said: "It is offering member countries a false choice. In particular, the governments will be denied the opportunity to justify the bans adopted at national level for environmental or health reasons."

The criticism stems from the fact that the Member States are not allowed to use justifications which conflict with the assessment of risks to human and animal health and the environment carried out by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). In addition, they would have to justify that their opt-out measures are compatible with EU law and the principles of proportionality and non-discrimination between national and non-national products.

Giovanni La Via, MEP from the Italian party 'New Centrodestra' and Chairman of the Environment Committee of the European Parliament, said: "Now we will proceed with the ordinary legislative process where Parliament will express its opinion. I think, however, that among Member States there is a wide aversion of this proposal."

A positive note is, however, by Nicola Caputo, MEP fom the Italian 'Democratic Party': "This new proposal is particularly important in light of the recent agreement on another piece of legislation that allows Member States to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs on their territory. We can then complete the update of the European set of rules on GMOs."

Marco Zullo, MEP from the Italian party 'Movimento 5 Stelle', is skeptical: "Under the new legislation we risk to worsen the situation, because the States will be left alone in front of the multinationals."

According to the existing legal framework, the European Commission may decide whether or not to authorize a specific GMO, on the basis of the EFSA assessment, provided that there is no vote against by a qualified majority of Member States (composed of 55% of the States and the 65% of the population). Since it is very difficult to reach a qualified majority, the European Commissions is has almost alwaysthe last word. So multinationals that export food and genetically modified feed from North and South America may threaten to sue the European Commission at the World Trade (WTO) Organization for any GMO authorization denial, accusing the current EU regime to be illegal.

"With the new proposal, the buck is sold to individual governments that will be exposed to the risk of summons in front of the WTO in case of prohibition of GMOs on national soil. Instead of providing the legal shields for the Member States, the European Commission just thinks of getting rid of its own responsibility," Zullo said.

Paradoxically, the new proposal covering GM crops in human food and animal feed upset also trading partners, notably the United States which want Europe to open its doors fully to U.S. GM crops as part of the planned EU-U.S. free trade deal.

According to the Office of United States Trade Representative (USTR) this decision could impact the exports and economies of countries around the world. In 2014, the EU imported a total of 3.1 billion Euro (3.4 billion dollars) of potentially affected products from United States, Argentina, Brazil and Canada. “Dividing the EU into 28 separate markets for the circulation of certain products is in opposition to the EU's goal of deepening the internal market integration," Michael Froman, Head of the USTR, said.

As of today, 58 GMOs are authorised in the EU for food and feed uses. One GM maize, MON 810, is cultivated in 5 Member States. There are 59 crops under pending approval, with 17 awaiting a final decision from the Commission after clearing checks by the EFSA.

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